Top ways movies predicted the future

Hollywood can sometimes be prophetic, with scripts and films that often tell the future (or plant the seeds) for actual events. With the Key West Film Festival kicking off this week, the Weekly examined some of our favorite Nostradamus movies out of Tinseltown. And while KITT the talking Pontiac from Knight Rider has yet to appear, a lot of uncanny and spooky revelations have come true after hitting the screen.

By Hays and Britt

In 2000, The Simpsons’ season 11, episode “Bart to the Future” predicted Donald Trump’s Presidency some 16 years later.

The book “1984” was written by George Orwell in 1949, made into movies in 1956 and 1984, and its premise was a world ruled by a totalitarian government. Big Brother controlled the masses with distractions such as wars. Fast forward to today, with cameras on every street corner and decades of ongoing military conflicts.

“Executive Decision” is a 1996 action hit starring Kurt Russell and containing the spookiest plot. Roughly five years before 9/11, the movie’s premise had terrorists hijacking a plane with plans to use it as weapon during a planned suicide mission. Yikes.

“Airplane II: The Sequel” (not as funny as the original) had full-animated body scanners at the airport. Hint: they magically only worked on women. Full body scanners didn’t actually happen until 2013; luckily they aren’t as revealing as they were in 1982 (RIP Lloyd Bridges).

“WarGames” (1983), starring Matthew Broderick, gave us our first taste of cyber warfare. Greetings, Professor Falken, shall we play a game?

“Bladerunner,” the original in 1982, showed the world the first digital billboards. Something we still could do without.

“2001: A Space Odyssey,” released in 1968, had an intelligent, talking computer named H.A.L. 9000. Now there is Siri. Wonder if the two are related?

And imagine being beamed from New Town to Old Town without the crosswalks to worry about.

“Face/Off” (1997), starring John Travolta and Nicholas Cage, included the first surgical face transplant. In real life, the first successful partial face transplant did not happen until 2005 in France, and the first full transplant happened in Spain five years later.